Get Your War On

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Denis makes an interesting point about the Twitter Generation being disinclined to get coffee. I have noticed a number of young 'uns in this business have lousy attitude and don't even know it. Some people don't take notes. Some people don't pick up their cigarette butts even after it's been pointed out that tossing them in someone's driveway isn't cool. You call to recommend them and they don't call the person you recommended them to. They don't go to parties or poker games you invite them to. They figure it will all come to them in due time when they're ready.

When I was in my 20's in the biz, I took a lot of crap. My first boss was a screamer, and I had to take his Jag in to be washed now and then. It was a great job because I learned a ton about development, packaging and production. I asked people advice, and took it, and went to every party, and even sent thank-you notes. (If you don't know what a thank-you note is, ask your grandmother.)

Show business is odd because it is creative, but it is hierarchical. (I have yet to see a good "open-source" screenplay.) So if you are a private, you should not feel like it is an imposition to do what the Sarge says. Or to salute the LT. I find the people who get ahead are those who instinctively understand that a peacetime mentality can get you killed in show business. Yes, those people are shooting at you. So do like the Sarge says and keep your fool head down, and start running when he says "run."

In other words, get your war on.

Too Long? What to Cut?

Q. I have solid pilot. It has good dialogue, fleshed out characters, fun action, solid structure, etc etc... basically people like it. Quite a bit actually. Unfortunately, it's now hitting 75 pages. You've talked about how page count varies wildly based on writer's voice and style. I think that's a large part of this, but it's still one of the longest pilot I have ever seen.

Maybe there's a scene or two that can be cut without major loss, but that's only going to give back, max, three pages. Cutting into most scenes, I fear, will compromise how the script presents to the reader and how the dialogue flows, which is working really well right now.

Do you have any advice? Perhaps I can leave it as is? (Fingers crossed) Or is there a particular strategy that you use when a script runs over and serious cutting needs to take place.

75 is way, way, way long, unless you are Amy Sherman-Palladino. In other words if your characters all talk like they're in HIS GIRL FRIDAY you're okay, but they probably don't. Even Aaron Sorkin's scripts are in the 60's, and they do go on.

An hour drama script should be about 52 pages.

Here are a few ideas how to fix it:

a. Start later. Could some of the story be backstory? Are you spending time setting things up that we could probably figure out without the setup? Could your Act One out be your Teaser out?
b. End earlier. You're writing a series. You want to end on a great cliffhanger so people will stick around for ep. 2. What if you end the episode sooner?
c. Cut a subplot. Odds are you have multiple subplots. Kill one. Save it for a later episode.
d. Jump the plot forward faster. Assume the audience is intelligent and sophisticated. Say you have a cop finding the murder weapon. Then they examine it. Then they argue about what it means. Cut the examination. We'll learn everything we need to know about the weapon from the argument.
e. Are your scenes too long? My scenes run one to one and a half pages. I might have a few two page scenes. A three page scene is a looong scene on TV. Can you get into your scenes later and get out of them sooner?
f. Kill your darlings. There are a couple of scenes that are in there because you just love them so. You know you don't strictly need them for the episode, but they're the reason you wrote the show. Cut them.

The key question is: these people who are liking it, are they professionals? There is such a thing as a salable 75 page script. But it's a fast-moving, talky episode. If professional screenwriters are liking it, you might be able to get away with it. But if your friends who are liking it aren't pros, then you may have trouble with your pilot.

Bad Language?

Q. Do you think when writing spec [feature] scripts, we should keep 'bad language' to a minimum? That way it's open to more people! Also, TV seems to be going into the dark realsm of language, what with the likes of True Blood and Dexter. More swearing etc. Personally, I think you have to use the language that fits the story. can you ever have a story about really really nasty people without the bad language? Would be unrealistic right?

I think the issue is gratuitous bad language. Where the f-bomb replaces character, you're failing.

You also need to think about who you're writing for. If you're writing for the adult audience, then you can use bad language. If you're writing for the mainstream audience, keep it down. But that applies to violence, adult situations and sex as well as the complexity and subtlety of ideas and the portrayal of characters. Think of who you're writing for. If you're doing a realistic-style gangster movie, bad language isn't going to turn anyone off. If you're doing a high-gloss gangster movie (OCEANS n), it might be a turn off.

In other words: don't try to make your script "open to more people." Try to make your script dead on for the audience you're looking for, whatever that is.

A fortiori, if you're writing a spec pilot, of course you write to the standards and practices of the type of network for which you have lovingly crafted your pilot. If that's broadcast, use broadcast standards. If it's family, use family standards.

I'm developing a pay cable series, so I can write as much coarse language as I want. Personally, I don't want very much. I like to use it for contrast. If you can have ten pages without a curse word, then a particularly transgressive character saying,

• RICO
• Chow hai, some people just won't fuckin' listen!

just before he shoots somebody, it has an effect it wouldn't have if every page is a stream of David Milch.

Vamps Like Shade

Slate has an article about how movie vampires break the rules. Garlic - useless. Mirrors -- no problem. Crosses -- gornisht helfen.

I have to say, some movies and TV shows I like are quite cavalier with the vamp canon, to the point where we see Angel showing up at Buffy's house steaming a bit because he's run through sunlight with his coat over his head. And in BLADE, vamps can go out in motorcycle leathers and helmets.

It's fun to muck reinterpret the legend. After all, what exactly is the physics of vamps not showing up in mirrors? Makes no sense. And if every vamp bite creates a new vamp (as seems to happen in Stoker), math suggests we'd all be undead by now. So there has to be mutual blood suckage to create a new vamp.

But it's dangerous to muck with canon too much.

If vamps can go out in full sunlight with, say, sunblock on, they're not vampires any more. Why? Because losing sunlight is part of the devil's bargain of being a vamp. You gain indefinite life span, but you can't go out in the sun any more. So it's not the UV rays, dig?

Your reinterpretation should feel more true emotionally than canon. That's why it's a reinterpretation. Not "what would fit my story," but "this is the legend as we know it; but what is the reality behind it?"

Do Movies Suck?

Boy, I have not been to see a movie in a dog's age. Am I missing something, or do movies just suck these days?

McKee says all the good movies are in TV. (Thank you, Krista!)

What are y'all looking for this Chrismukkah / Oscar-qualifying-Season?

You Are Having Tea With Neil Gaiman?

I am having tea with Neil Gaiman. What should I ask him?

If I could answer that question, I might have bid on having tea with Neil Gaiman.

The odd thing is, although I am a huge Neil Gaiman fan, I don't think I would know what to say to him over the course of tea. I think there are many things I could say to him over the course of a long friendship. But tea? I'm stumped.

I mean, I could say, "I think you would like the series I'm writing for pay cable," but that's kind of lame until it becomes "I think you will like the series I have coming out on pay cable this January, can I send you a DVD if you don't have cable there in Minnesota?"

What do you say to one of your personal writing gods?

Ironically I think I might have less to say to Neil Gaiman than other writers because I feel like our brains operate on parallel tracks. I know where he gets his ideas. Same place I get mine. He just gets more of them and writes them better.

(I might ask Neil who the god everyone forgets is, in American Gods.)

I'm not sure I'd know what to say to Aaron Sorkin, either. Aside from, "Hey, willya please get back to writing TV. Oh, and, stay off the coke, eh?"

(I might ask Aaron Sorkin, "So what the hell is a play these days?")

It has got harder to ask questions, too, because you don't want to ask a question to which the answer can be found in a couple of minutes Googling. Waste of a question, you know. (RTFFAQ, y'know.) I mean, it is not all that hard to find out what other author Neil recommends. And I hate to ask questions I can figure out an answer to. ("How do you decide whether something is a book or a comic book or a TV show or a movie idea?")

A bunch of us went to see Rob Thomas talk about VERONICA MARS, a couple of Banffs ago. You could tell the writers because they were asking process questions, e.g. "Season Two is more serial, but then Season Three got all episodic, what's up with that, was that a network thing or did you get irritated at being stuck connecting the episodes?" But there were no real questions about the writing, not from the writers, I don't think.

Scholars would probably have lots of questions for Shakespeare. I'm not sure what I'd ask him, either. What could he tell me about how he goes about being Shakespeare? He could tell me I am sure wonderful stories about the moneylender coming to reposess his theatre and how he got out of it, and what idiots patrons are. But the writing itself is locked inside the semi-bald pate.

Thing is, there are few funner people to be around than writers, I personally think. But they are typically more ordinary than what they write. The fascinating process by which experience is smelted into story is mostly offscreen. The only way to get a sense of someone's process is really to write something with them. (Which is the best reason to hang around other writers. You get to work with them now and then.) Everything else is just wittier cameraderie.

UPDATE: Oh, right. You could always pitch him a story you're writing, and see what questions he has for you. And if he's feeling really generous he could tell you some directions you might want to take the story...

They Used My Spec Idea!

Q. You've commented in the past that a good spec should last a few seasons, but what happens if the show uses one's premise? I had the lovely experience of watching "House" last night, only to find that the show used the same disease and unusual treatment as I'd used in a spec I wrote over the summer. The episode's B-plot was a conflict between House and Foreman about Foreman's career development; I included a similar conflict in my spec. Granted, the reason I wrote the spec was to submit it to fellowships over the summer, which I did, but now I worry that I can't use the script going forward.

I know most readers won't have an encyclopedic knowledge of the show, but the last thing I want is for my spec to land in the lap of someone who does and who then thinks I recycled an episode. Am I worrying over nothing? Or should I just suck it up and resign myself to another spec, another month of medical research so all-consuming I wander around muttering to myself about the distinctions between hypoperfusion, hypoxia, hemoptysis, and hypotension?

Hmmm, interesting question.

I'm torn. I doubt that many agents watch HOUSE consistently, or pay close attention to the medicine when they do. I would worry more if you have the same patient. I'm not a big HOUSE fan myself, but I think the attraction of the medicine is to watch HOUSE fence with the patients. The memorable moments probably aren't the medical ones. You can probably still use it.

After all, I doubt there are very many ailments HOUSE hasn't used by now. And showing your chops as a researcher -- though it sounds like you have great ones -- is less important thanshowing that you can catch the voices and reproduce the template of the show.

But you're right, it has gone down in value. I wouldn't spec another HOUSE though. No one's going to read two HOUSE specs from you. I'd spec something else next -- something character-based, not procedural.

Any agents care to comment on this?

Afternoon Tea with Neil Gaiman

For an entirely reasonable price (though I'm sure it will go up from $850), you can have tea with Neil Gaiman. It's in a good cause, so go wild.